Photo journalist Tim Hetherington, the co-director of Oscar-nominated war documentary Restrepo, died in the besieged Libyan town of Misurata yesterday, doctors said.
Getty photographer Chris Hondros, who had been hospitalised, died later from his injuries. He had suffered brain injuries.
The photographers were among a group caught by mortar fire on Tripoli Street, the main thoroughfare leading into the centre of Misurata, the only major rebel-held town in western Libya and besieged by Muammar Gadafy’s forces for more than seven weeks.
“It was quiet and we were trying to get away and then a mortar landed and we heard explosions,” Spanish photographer Guillermo Cervera said.
"It hit the group," he said. "They were all on the floor."
A Ukrainian doctor was killed in a separate incident, medics said. The doctor's wife lost her legs.
Hetherington, also a stills photographer who won the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year award, co-directed with Sebastian Junger the 2010 Afghan war documentary Restrepo , which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Hondros was an award-winning photographer who covered major conflicts including Kosovo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the West Bank, Iraq and Liberia, according to his website. Hondros received multiple awards, including the 2005 Robert Capa gold medal. His work in Liberia earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
Hetherington had used his Twitter account to post reports on the heavy bombardment of Misurata earlier in the week.
“In besieged Libyan city of Misrata,” he wrote in his final message. “Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of Nato.”
Hetherington (41) was born in Liverpool and studied literature at Oxford University. He was a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair .
Khalid Abufalgha, a doctor on the Misrata medical committee, said a total of 365 people had been killed, including at least 85 civilians, and 4,000 people wounded in the Mediterranean city since it came under government siege about seven weeks ago.
Rebels said they were battling for control of a major road in the port of 300,000 people, which is the insurgents' last bastion in the west of the country, where war erupted in February over demands for an end to Muammar Gadafy's 41-year rule.